Chapter Ten
I arrived over an hour late. In spite of my apologies and the bruises on my leg from being shoved, it was clear I’d earned no sympathy from Mrs. Dang.
She was older than Ah Ma, her face puckered with deep long grooves and more wrinkles than a dried jujube.
I could barely see her eyes or make out her lips, but her hands moved energetically while she spoke.
“Ha Yut Ying,” she said. “Take machine number five. Pedal down to sew, pedal up to stop. You’ll receive twenty cents for each pair of slippers you complete, and if you don’t turn in ten pairs a day, your pay will be withheld until the end of the month.”
Machine number five was on the end of a long table, undesirable because it was farthest from the window. Heat collected in my corner, and within minutes of sitting at my workstation, a well of sweat simmered on the nape of my neck.
I counted twenty-four women in the factory, excluding myself and Mrs. Dang.
I was the youngest, along with a girl my age wearing an orange headscarf, and the oldest were a pair of octogenarians who tied their white hair in skin-tight buns.
The only chatter came from these two old ladies, who I’d soon conclude were immune from Mrs. Dang’s wrath.
Everyone else who dared speak, even if to ask for a pair of scissors or more thread, met her harsh signature shout: “Shut up, you nosy cows!”
What gossip was there to listen to? Everyone was hunched over, practically welded to their machines for the next ten hours, and the only noises were whirring and tappity tap taps. My ears were already ringing.
I started to rise. I needed to tell Gu Ma there’d been a mistake.
“What do you think you’re doing, Number Five?” Mrs. Dang yelled from across the room.
Number Five. That was me.
Mrs. Dang stood on her stool, rolling a newspaper into a megaphone. “Piss breaks are only after lunch,” she shrilled.
I sat back down, my foot accidentally landing on the pedal. The needle on my machine punched up-down-up-down like a drill, making me jump.
A laugh bubbled out of someone’s throat. I knew without looking that it was the girl with the orange headscarf.
My jaw clenched. I bowed my head over my machine and got to work.
In the late afternoon Gu Ma appeared, striding down the aisles of workstations with a paper fan.
“Sui Chan!” she exclaimed, stopping next to the headscarf girl. “Fifty slippers already? You make your mother proud.”
I gawked. Fifty slippers? I had barely finished a single pair.
Next, Gu Ma’s shadow eclipsed me, and she snapped her fan shut.
“Your godmother said you could sew,” she said.
What godmother? I stared blankly until my aunt scowled. Was I supposed to play along? “I’m—”
She grabbed me by the sleeve. “Come with me.”
My cheeks burned as I rose, walking behind her down the long aisle.
Gu Ma’s office was in the next building, where the men worked on assembling rubber boots. The air inside was gray like cloudy rice water, and the vapors from the glues and paints stung my eyes.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” she said. “We produce over a hundred boots a day, and twice as many shoes.”
My aunt led me into a private room in a corner of the factory.
The office was lavishly furnished, with gold-marbled wallpaper and wooden blinds over the windows.
On her desk was a giant jade money frog for attracting prosperity, along with an assortment of other superstitious knickknacks, but what caught my attention was the altar with the faded photograph of her late husband, whom I had never met.
She closed the door. “Late on your first day, I hear. Doesn’t know how to change the bobbin and can’t even sew in a straight line.” She clucked. “Perhaps you’re not as capable as you were made out to be.”
“I’ve been listening like you asked,” I said in mild protest. “No one’s said anything. Everyone’s diligently working.”
“You’ve only been here one day. The girls are wary of newcomers.
” Gu Ma sat, lighting a cigarette. “Aiya, don’t sulk, it makes you look like my mother.
” Her pupils constricted as she inhaled.
“Now look, I know this isn’t the life you pictured when your baba brought you to Hong Kong, but I assure you it’s temporary. ”
“Will I go to school soon?”
“The war ended only a few months ago,” she reminded me. “Once things settle down, we can discuss your schooling, though to be frank, I don’t know why you want so badly to be educated. Your head is small, it isn’t suited for learning.”
“But Ah Ma said—”
“Said what?” Gu Ma practically spat smoke. “My mother’s spent her whole life in the countryside, what does she know of the world? Listen to me, Yut Ying. Your father came to me for a reason. Of course I’ll take care of you.”
I forced a smile. “Thank you, Gu Ma.”
“Good.” My aunt exhaled, drawing out her breath. She set down her cigarette and reached behind her desk. “Now hold out your hands.”
I quailed, sensing something ominous. “Why?”
Gu Ma held up a rattan rod, so lean that it curved when she waved it. Harmless looking, but I knew better.
I took a step back. “Why are you holding a cane?”
“Chan Kiu Factory adheres to the highest standards,” she said. “The seamstresses need to believe that I’ve punished you. Otherwise, they’ll be suspicious about why you still work here.”
My mouth went slack. Even Ah Ma had stopped caning me long ago. “But, Gu Ma—”
“The longer we dally, the harder I’ll strike. Hold out your hands.”
I balled my fists at my sides. When I was little, I would run to the bathhouse and lock the door, hiding from Ah Ma’s wrath until she grew angry at someone else. But there was nowhere to hide in Gu Ma’s office.
I did as she asked and shut my eyes. A sharp whack stung my forearms. Two more followed, equally as intense. I bit down on my lip to keep from crying out.
When I opened my eyes again, Gu Ma was bending down to inspect her handiwork. Three tomato-sized welts had formed where she’d struck me. “You’re dismissed.”
Anger flared in my chest, but I smothered it. I was afraid to talk back to Gu Ma. If she kicked me out of the house, where would I go? I didn’t have money to return to Tunglam, and even if I did, how could I face Mama? Simply thinking about it shamed me.
I retreated back to my corner, my arm smarting. I held my breath to contain my temper, and a thousand icy pinpricks crept up my skin, the feeling before I turned invisible.
Stop, I thought. I couldn’t vanish here in front of everyone.
I let out a slow exhale, curling my toes into my shoes as I clenched the edge of my workstation. Finally, the glittering cold faded. I was whole again.
Around me, the sewing machines churned.
I hid a smile. Having this curse does not make you special, Mama had warned, but how could it not? This was my secret, my seed of strength.
No one could take it from me.
By the end of the month, I was sewing twelve slippers a day. I was still the slowest in the factory, and thanks to my lead foot, I was constantly in danger of impaling my fingers while threading the needle. But finally I’d receive my pay.
First I’d ask someone to help write a letter to Mama, then maybe I’d buy new underwear and socks, a bag of jelly candies and a soda.
The possibilities were endless. Or I could save my wages for what I truly wanted: a record.
One I could keep in my room and touch and listen to as much as I wanted. One I could call my own.
When it came my turn, Mrs. Dang had no paper envelope to give me. “Madam Chan is keeping your salary,” she said. She swept me aside. “Next!”
I refused to budge. “What?”
“How do we know you won’t run off with the money and not come back? Madam Chan treats every worker in this factory as an investment.” She spoke the word glacially, as though I were too dumb to understand. “You’ll get your pay when you’ve proven yourself. Next!”
But she’s my aunt, I wanted to protest. Of course I couldn’t.
I stumbled away from the crowd of weary seamstresses waiting for their wages.
Sui Chan caught me by the arm. “You’re sewing too fast,” she said. “You need to go slower to work faster.”
That made no sense. “What?”
“Too fast, you don’t have as much control over the machine,” she explained. “When you go slow and steady, you can turn the fabric more easily. Like this, see?”
The machine purred under her hands like a cat. She made it look so easy.
“I’m Sui Chan.”
“I know.”
My tone didn’t deter her. “Everyone dislikes me because I’m Madam Chan’s favorite, and everyone dislikes you because you’re her least. We should be friends, don’t you think?”
The proposal was matter-of-fact, the way that one would count from one to ten. I was stunned. “Is that how you make friends?”
“I don’t have many,” she admitted. “But I’m guessing you don’t either.”
I had to admire her directness. It was no trivial feat, how Sui Chan had made me forget my grudge against her. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”
“Your godmother should have sent you to be a cook instead of a seamstress.” She smacked her lips, eyeing my lunch with longing.
Sui Chan’s meals were tragic puddles of congee with a smear of tomato sauce or, on good days, a burnt egg. “You can’t cook,” I realized.
“Haven’t had time to learn, with my brothers at home. The little pests aren’t much help, they scorch the rice.” Sui Chan made a face, but she spoke with affection.
“Scorched rice makes the best porridge,” I replied. “How about this: You teach me to sew, I’ll teach you to cook.”
She grinned. “We’ll start tomorrow.”
I dreaded work less after that. The only time Sui Chan and I got to talk was at lunch, so we ate with alacrity, then exchanged lessons.
I drew step-by-step pictures of my favorite recipes, and she taught me to wind my machine’s handwheel and thread the needle when it was at its highest point, and how to guide the fabric with my hands so that my stitches would be straight and even.
“Think of the machine as your car, and you’re driving within a lane,” she told me. “It’ll be more fun that way.”
The advice helped me get through our long days.
Gu Ma left the factory at four o’clock, and the seamstresses were permitted to leave beginning at seven.
Each evening, I was the first to bounce up from my chair, depositing my slippers into the collection bin.
Then I began the long walk to Gu Ma’s house.
The seamstresses didn’t gossip much about my aunt, but they did talk about the mainland.
On most days, Mrs. Dang tuned her radio to romantic and popular music—which I adored—but often a news broadcast would interrupt the program.
From what I could gather, the newscasters worried that civil war was coming to China.
“Do you think the Communists will win?” Sui Chan asked.
“Heaven wouldn’t be so cruel as to make China endure another long war.”
Sui Chan didn’t look as sure. After losing both of her parents during the war—her father had been a soldier in the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, her mother a nurse—she leaned more cynical.
“Let’s hope you’re right,” she said. “And let’s be grateful we’re in Hong Kong.”
I put on a smile, pulling it out of the well of desperate optimism I stored inside me.
It was what had kept me going during those four years in Tunglam while starving and praying the Japanese wouldn’t find us.
In the back of my head, I convinced myself that things would be fine.
Mama would have warned me if war were coming.
Then again, I’d never asked.